Scottish Government

Introduction

In Summer 2010, the Town Centres and Local High Streets Learning Network established two practitioner learning sets focused around Performance Management issues in town centres.

This document presents the work of those group members involved in the learning sets (see Appendix A for details on group membership). As group facilitator, Jacquie Reilly (Association of Town Centre Management), had a co-ordinating and editing role, but it should be acknowledged that the hard work and effort was shared amongst the individual members of the group.The document identifies key areas which should be considered when developing a performance management framework to monitor a town centre. It highlights a range of performance measures under three key themes of 'People', 'Place' and 'Work'. Each performance area discusses suitable mechanisms and how they work, giving examples of how the measures can be used and existing systems of information which are available.

This document is not designed to prescriptively outline what Key Performance Indicators should be used by all towns and partnerships, instead it identifies a range of indicators that organisations and partnerships may want to consider implementing at the outset of their activities.

Benefits of implementing performance measures

Establishing a performance framework for town centres is essential for both local and strategic assessment.

Strategic Reasoning:

• Provide an overall assessment of Scottish towns performance
• Demonstrate the well-being of Scottish town centres
• Provide comparison data
• Provide benchmarking data
• Provide mechanisms to assess and allocate funding and other support
• Strategic overview of key areas requiring attention
• Mechanism to asses the impact of national and international changes on town centres

Local Reasoning:

• Measure performance of the town over time
• Measure the success/impact of:
• Strategies
• Projects
• Specific activities
• Compare the town with other centres
• Compare the impact against similar strategies/projects/activities delivered in other towns
• Make informed decisions
• Identify areas of focus

Other sources of information

It is important to remember that whilst some data will need to be specifically collected for the partnerships agreed measures, there is a wealth of data already collected which may be adapted for your performance monitoring framework.

The indicators that are used to assess town centres cover a wide area of activities and as such there are many sources of information available. Key sources include:

• The Scottish Government
• Government Agencies
• Local Authorities
• Chambers of Commerce
• Town Centre Partnerships
• Trade Associations

Using this document

The Key Performance Indicators suggested and identified by the learning set members have been broken down into three key themes:

Each Key Performance Indicator contains information on:

• Mechanism of collection
• Whether it is a strategic tool, impact measure or both
• Outlines whether it is short, medium, long term - or all
• Who is responsible for that data (Local Authority, Central Government Private Sector etc)
• What the KPI is relevant for
• How does existing policy support the KPI
• Existing systems in place to collect data

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